| | Hi all,
I lurk more than I post. I used to post on the old Wetpaint site as "wildlings". But that's all to the side.
In June-July I completed a 21 day vipassana retreat in northern Thailand, which taught Mahasi noting (with some variations that I've mostly dispensed with).
I practise between one and three times per day, walking and sitting for 20-30 minutes each per session, with an additional five minutes of standing at the start of every session. I experience a lot of disparate sensations during my practice, scatter-gun-like. The way these sensations occur to me is something like the following:
A B C x | | | x | | x | x | | | x | | | x x | | | | x x | | x | | | x |
(etc)
Most descriptions I have read sound very different to this. They make the occurrence of each sensation sound sequential, with each sensation coming to a stately passing away before the arising of the next.
For me, whenever a sensation arises, my attention doesn't so much switch to it as expand to include it; it then oscillates from one sensation to the other, back and forth. Then a third crops up, at which point it cycles through them. Eventually some of the earlier sensations will cease and drop out of the cycle. This timeslicing makes it hard to notice the cessation. I try not to deliberately control the cycling although I detect a semi-conscious choice at times, which I also note.
The expansion to include each successive sensation is quite a lovely, encompassing feeling, like progressively opening up to the sensations that make up life in the present. Even conventionally unpleasant sensations like a neighbour's chainsaw or television lose their bite in these times of peaceful expansion. I note the openness.
Although this is quite a pleasant experience, I worry about the precision of my noting -- with such breadth of sensation, it's hard to notice the finer detail of each and every one, especially when they're coming thick and fast (10-20hz if I'm warmed up). Am I right to worry about this? I could open out LESS, and solidify on one at a time, thereby increasing concentration and stability?
Regardless, the secondary problem of being so open arises -- mental sensations. I've got touch happening, maybe cycling in multiple body parts at once, I've got sounds incorporated and tumbling over the bodily sensations so rapidly they almost seem to be co-occurring to my awareness. Smells, check. Taste, check.
(I call this "chording" internally and for lack of a better term.)
At some point, I start to encompass thoughts and mental sensations and here I get stuck. Really stuck.
Often the sensations involve exhilaration and self-congratulation at being so fundamentally open and free of anxiety. I try to note these off, but I'm slow to recognise them and often get caught up in content for a good five or ten seconds. This leads to questions and doubts, which I again am slow to recognise and note off. Often I notice some sort of interpretive faculty that renders experience into words, yammering away at such speed that I have trouble noting it along with everything else. When I do manage to grab hold of it, I fall down a recursive spiral of noting that I'm rendering into words the act of noting that I'm rendering into words the act of noting...
Around ten or twenty seconds later this blast of mental sensations burns itself out and I'm left, exhausted and confused, which I note. Drifting, drifting, confused, confused, sleepy, sleepy ... eventually I come back to rising, falling, rising, falling, ... itching, itching, hearing, hearing, hearing opening, open out open open ... BLAM mental sensations again. And the cycle continues ...
With mental sensations, I note at the level of "planning", "counting", "remembering', "reflecting", "fear", "doubt" etc, but I can't note them any more clearly than that and as I have said emotional content seems to get me caught. Nor can I ascertain how fast I am noting them. I doubt it's more than once per second. Are there specific techniques for dealing with mental sensations that could help? Should I perhaps deliberately filter them out to retain concentration?
Before sitting, I walk. While walking, I do not experience the same flurry of sensations (physical or mental); this is because I deliberately filter them out and stabilise on the feet. I could walk while noting sounds or sensations in arms, torso etc (and indeed sometimes I do this) but in general I have found that doing a concentrated walking practice is a nice complement and warm-up to the insight of sitting.
Many thanks for being here,
Jules |